ABSTRACT
Youths and adults with intellectual disabilities have higher-than-average rates of adverse childhood experiences (Horner-Johnson & Drum, 2006), including interpersonal traumas such as abuse, neglect, and family violence along with disrupted attachments and family relationships, leading, in turn, to a high risk of Complex Trauma. RLH can be easily adapted to engage youths and adults with intellectual disabilities by slowing down the pace of treatment, breaking it into smaller pieces, modifying some vocabulary for adolescents and adults with intellectual disabilities, and including more repetition (Marcal, 2015). From a developmental standpoint, an adult with a mental age of 10 can probably learn things a 10year-old can learn. But what might take a 10-year-old of average intelligence one session, might take three (Marcal, 2015). RLH can also be adapted to work well with the NCTSN’s training curriculum for supporting children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (Ko, Griffin, Vanderbilt et al, 2015).
